Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Citizen Hearing and Merrill Cook

When I read that former Congressman
Merrill Cook from Utah, one of those at the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, had
said, “I do not believe there has been any strong,
credible evidence of [alien visits] at this point but I do think there has been
some credible evidence of things that are unidentified that had been flying
about,” I was disappointed. But then I thought about what he had said and
realized that it was quite fair.

Merrill Cook

Cook, who
asked some very convoluted questions, hadn’t dismissed the idea of alien
visitation but had suggested that the strong evidence hadn’t been presented. Of
course that was correct. Had there been that sort of physical evidence, then
the conversation would have ended at that point and we could move onto the next
phase.

There were
some very persuasive documents presented. In one case from South America, a
pilot, Comandante Oscar Santa Maria Huertas (Ret) of the Peruvian Air Force, who
had fired on a UFO described the event. He had two pages of an official message
about it. It said that he had fired on the UFO without results and I realized
that could have meant he missed, so I asked.

Using a 30
mm cannon on his SU-22, he had hit the object when he shot at it. The rounds
had no effect, and the object seemed to “absorb” the ammunition. Make no
mistake, a 30 mm round is huge and explosive.

While I was
on the “hot seat” along with Don Schmitt and Stan Friedman, Cook asked if
anyone in 1947 had seen the alien bodies, but it wasn’t clear if he wanted to
know if someone had discussed it in 1947 or if he wanted to know if someone
there in 1947 had seen them. Each time we tried to offer an answer, he seemed
to change the question by adding qualifications or modifications to it.

The answer
was, of course, that none of us were around in 1947 (other than Stan) to gather
evidence. However, Dan Dwyer had told family members in 1947 that he had seen
the bodies, describing them as small humanoids.

This is the
Frankie Rowe tale. She said that her father came home after seeing the crash
site and told them of the little men he had seen. Later, Rowe’s sister, Helen
Cahill said that sometime around 1960, she asked her father about the story and
he told it to her. Does that make Rowe’s report true? No, just answers the
question that we do have some testimony for that.

There was
also Beverly Bean whose father, Melvin Brown, told her during the first moon
landing that the UFOs were real and he had seen the bodies. There is another
version of this that suggests he told her sometime later, but the point is that
he was apparently saying these things prior to the publication of the Roswell
information (and yes, both her sister and her mother have confirmed that Brown
said these things, which, again, doesn’t make them true, only that he said them
several times over the years).

I mentioned
Edwin Easley and what he had said to family members, but, of course, this all
came about in the early 1990s.

So, we had
the names of people who seemed to have passed word of the bodies in 1947, and
the names of people who had been there, in Roswell in 1947, who mentioned
bodies to family members at some point after that. We had the answer to the
question. We just didn’t articulate it well.

Cook at the Citizen Hearing

We did a
poor job of answering the question for Cook and that is our fault. And before I
get comments telling me that the testimony is in dispute, that we’re dealing
with memories that are now decades old, and that we have some tales that have
been disproved, I know all that. The question might have been had any of these
people talked about bodies in 1947, and the evidence says that they did… but
the proof is not there.

And he had
a tendency to cut off an answer and ask another question, or maybe the same question
a different way, which added to the confusion. He asked some convoluted
question about the American Academy of Sciences and their endorsement of the
Condon Committee report. I should have said that they had not engaged in a proper
peer review because if they had, they would have noticed that 30% of the cases
were unexplained. Worse, if possible, one was explained as a natural phenomenon
so rare it had never been seen before or since but didn’t identify what that
might be.

The real
point is that we can prove the cover-up with documentation that has been
declassified and documents that are clearly false. How else to explain the Air
Force response to Senator Jeff Bingaman when he asked about Project Moon Dust?
He was told that such a project never existed. Well it did and continues under
another name (and no, I don’t know that name).

So Cook
wouldn’t say that we proved to him that we have been visited, but we proved
enough that he thought there is credible evidence that something unidentified
is flying around. That might be splitting a hair, but I understand what he was
thinking when he said that. Besides, he agreed that something unidentified was
flying around and that is more than enough.

Had we had
more time, had we brought other documents, had we provided more sources for the
information, we might have done even better. For now, this is enough. Something
unidentified is flying around and shouldn’t we attempt to find out what it is?

63 comments:

The Peruvian Comandante's report is certainly a very interesting case. It would be nice to learn more of the details, such as where, when, time of day, appearance, range, etc. Getting hits with a 30mm cannon without any visible results is incredible.

I think some of the radar cases are the most compelling such as the Washington D.C. sightings and the Lakenheath, England case in the 1950's. My personal favorites are the Andrews AFB sightings and the Coyne case, where there was radar and ground observers that verified there was something buzzing around the sky those nights.

An interesting and wide ranging post. If I were to give my formal opinion it would be similar - something is flying around but the exact nature of it remains to be formerly determined, in the small minority of cases which have sufficient primary data to evaluate properly and seem to lack a reasonable mundane explanation (some would suggest that none meet both those criteria, but...).In terms of possible actual evidence for the ETH...a) theoretical - the Fermi paradox outlines how odd it is that we don't, officially, see any sign of any ETCsb) Indications of control or technological effects on the environment in a number of very high reliability cases (e.g. Elsworth, 1953, Tehran 1976, Trans-en-Provence, 1981 etc)c) Supporting case material of similar nature to those mentioned in (b) but without quite the same depth of data (as an example the 'Florida School master' case described by Ruppelt has some similarities in effects on the soil to Trans-en Provence etc.d) A consistent theoretical framework in which UFO events have a consistency with prediction - Hill (1995).

Dare I mention the Ramey memo...conscious that is rather controversial and does seem open to different reads in large part as it is so blurred. Some bits are much less blurred however and I do tend to agree with Dr Rudiak's interpretation of the word often read as 'victims'. If the Mogul hypothesis for Roswell can be falsified (which is can) and there were actually victims that may go quite some way but still falls short of formal proof

"The question might have been had any of these people talked about bodies in 1947, and the evidence says that they did… but the proof is not there."

The only proof of any use to science is one of:

(i) the presentation of the actual bodies (presumed to be in official secret vaults since 1947) for the public to see.

(ii) genuine documentation dating from that period which mentions such bodies.

After 65 years, I think we can safely say that neither will ever be produced. No amount of anecdotal evidence is going to change this either. And the only evidence that anyone even discussed (let alone actually witnessed) alien bodies in 1947 is anecdotal testimony given post-1980, i.e. post-publication of THE ROSWELL INCIDENT.

CdaYou mention genuine documentation from the period that mentions bodies. I would suggest that the Ramey memo meets that criteria. Whilst I would agree with those who suggest that most of it is too blurred for reading reliably with current approaches / technology I would encourage anyone to study carefully the geometry of the word usually read as victims and its immediate context. There are a few other short segments were great clarity and grammatical context combine to severely limit the options for possible reads which help place the text securely in the context of the Roswell crash, regardless of the uncertainty over other parts of the text. Whilst not requiring a crashed UFO to have been recovered the Smith memo, supported by Sarbacher ( and probably referring to same group Ruppelt mentions in his chapter on the Lubbock lights) is pertinent to the general discussion in that it provides strong contemporary documentary evidence for a more serious layer of study of the phenomenon than Blue Book.

As one official asked Ruppelt, discussing the EM effects on the soil in the Florida Scoutmaster case, 'how much evidence do you need?' That is, as Ruppelt noted, a good question and far from simple to answer.

Agree with everything you say, of course, including the Ramey memo and "victims" as period documentation of bodies. Looks like we're turning into the Bobsey Twins.

I also consider the relatively clear phrase of something "in the 'disc'" being shipped as pretty damn incriminating. Radar targets have no insides nor are they important enough to ship on a B-29 (Marcel's flight from Roswell to Fort Worth). We are literally talking about a balsa wood kite weighing only a few ounces.

To this I might add the following indirect documentation and "coincidences". Early on July 8 (it made the evening papers back East July 8), the Army Air Force at the Pentagon put out a press release denying that the flying saucers were "space ships". This would have been just a few hours before the Roswell press release made the news wires (about 5:30 EST).

Over in Fort Worth that evening, Gen. Ramey publicly denied that the Roswell "disc" could have carried a man since it was too flimsy. In other words he was denying any crew or bodies being involved just in case anybody raised the issue. He also added a 25 foot in diameter description to the "box-kite" disc "if reconstructed", a whole lot bigger than the actual 4 feet across of a real radar target. Major Marcel also let slip that debris was "scattered over a square mile".

Also the morning of July 8 at the Pentagon, acting AAF chief Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg called an emergency meeting of the War Dept.'s Joint Research and Development Board, cancelling a previously scheduled meeting. It lasted for 2-1/2 hours and overlapped exactly with the staff meeting taking place in Roswell. The JRDB was headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush of MJ-12 infamy. Three years later the Wilbert Smith Canadian papers fingered Bush as heading a super-secret group within the RDB looking into the flying saucers, which were quite real and classified higher than the H-bomb. The primary source for Smith in 1950 was Dr. Robert Sarbarcher, who confirmed the information 30+ years later. The original Smith docs do not mention bodies, but Sarbacher interviewed later did bring them up. Also, Sarbacher in 1950 said the facts in the 1950 Frank Scully book were "substantially correct", which might imply bodies in addition to crashed saucers.

I agree this is probably the same group alluded to by Ruppelt investigating the Lubbock Lights and also taking over investigative duties after Vandenberg killed Project Sign for daring to come to an ET conclusion in their 1948 Estimate of the Situation. (Did I neglect to mention Gen. Twining's equally infamous Oct. 1947 memo saying the saucers were quite real, should be taken seriously, and led to the creation of Project Sign to begin with?)

The only thing I know of from that July 8 JRDB meeting was the decision to go forward with a new rocket facility to launch satellites into orbit, which eventually led to Cape Canaveral/Kennedy. This is mentioned in some histories of the Cape. I would speculate this was a direct policy response to the possible saucer threat (to meet it in space) and the impromptu meeting and coincidental time with the staff meeting in Roswell is a bit much.

Immediately afterward, the JRDB executive secretary, Dr. Lawrence R. Hafsted, debunked the saucers as "poppycock" in the same UP story denying that they were "space ships".

The next day, UP and INS stories about Roswell admitted that the Army and Navy were running a "concentrated" debunkery campaign against the saucers to diminish public interest.

Anthony makes a good point. The Ramey memo is undoubtedly a contemporaneous document. The only question is what the words on it actually say.

So, David, or anyone--has there been an attempt to find an original copy of the memo? Either from the National Archives or through an FOIA request? The memo must have originated at the Pentagon and there should be a log book. Did the Air Force investigation of 1994-95 address this? This would seem to be a researchable avenue.

@ DavidThe various diary arrangements of senior figures are interesting. We would certainly predict that, if there was something serious going on around that time we would expect re-arrangements of diaries as described. I think I've seen somewhere than Vandenburg met Forrestal earlier that day (meeting him at the airport and travelling back in the same car?) which could also be taken as an indication that they needed to discuss something quickly - although at that level there could be many things in that category on any given day. What I am not aware of is any indication of changes to Truman's schedule around this time - not sure if there weren't any or if I've just not come across it?

Larry:The Ramey memo was referred to in the USAF 1995 Roswell Report but was said to be illegible, even to advanced optical analysis by an official body. Several people tried to find out the name of the organisation that performed this analysis, but got no response. The conclusion was that the USAF must have something to hide, and since then various private groups have been trying to decipher it using their own methods.

There is disagreement among these people as to what the message says, even who it is from and who it is addressed to, yet still some insist it contains the great 'smoking gun'.

It is worth pointing out that in THE ROSWELL INCIDENT, the authors say it is simply the draft of Ramey's short talk on radio that evening, and therefore nothing special. (Evidently Moore, Friedman and Co could decipher the memo without any optical equipment!)

You can judge its true value by noting that if it were something of real import it would certainly have been preserved and thus be available to the public (and would thus have been located during the 1994 GAO search for documents).

The fact that it was not located tells me that it was merely a short lived note of no importance, and was destroyed soon afterwards.

But of course that is not the view of DR and his 'Ramey memo' enthusiasts. They insist a huge pile of Roswell papers, including this memo, are still extant and stashed away in top secret vaults.

We could debate the legibility or otherwise of the Ramey memo forever and no doubt never agree. Perhaps the best approach is simply to encourage anyone with a serious interest in this topic to take a careful look at it, the various opinions on it, various analyses of specific elements of the memo and then draw their own conclusions.

You are right, we could debate the text of Ramey memo forever. But there are different ways of debating,

The way that Dr. Rudiak does it is completely unscientific (by pronouncement essentially). Rudiak uses the same methods employed by ghost hunters for dechphering pretend recorded messages from ghosts: he tells you what to see in the clouds and voila! You suddenly can see it,

Kevin attempted a much more scientific and admirable attempt which soundly destroyed Rudiak's claims.

I think looking into the memo was an excellent idea. But in the hands of a committed conspiracist, everything gets colored.

Anthony Mugan wrote:The various diary arrangements of senior figures are interesting. We would certainly predict that, if there was something serious going on around that time we would expect re-arrangements of diaries as described. I think I've seen somewhere than Vandenburg met Forrestal earlier that day (meeting him at the airport and travelling back in the same car?) which could also be taken as an indication that they needed to discuss something quickly - although at that level there could be many things in that category on any given day.

Not Forrestal but Army AF Secretary Stuart Symington. On the afternoon of July 7, Vandenberg canceled a dental appointment to personally go out to the airport to pick up Symington and take him back to the Pentagon.

Yes, I think something very important had come up for Vandenberg to have done this, an urgency about seeing Symington that couldn't wait for Symington to take a cab or for an aide to pick him up instead. There is no historical record of anything else at the time that would have required such an urgent meeting.

Just before this, Vandenberg's daily log indicates he was personally dealing with other "flying disc" business (instead of letting aides or PR people handle it as would usually be the case), including trying to kill a hoax crashed saucer story out of Houston reported by the newspaper. (Much detail in Vandenberg's log, but not a single word the next day about the official release from Roswell about actually having a disc.) Gen. Curtis LeMay, (Dept. Director of Research and Development) was assisting him.

In time, this coincides with when Roswell PIO Walter Haut said he was learning of the find by civilians of a true crashed disc north of town. So yes, my speculation is that the urgent piece of business that couldn't wait was the latest news from Roswell.

Anthony Mugan wrote:What I am not aware of is any indication of changes to Truman's schedule around this time - not sure if there weren't any or if I've just not come across it?

There are no "smoking guns" in Truman's schedule or phone log, but more interesting "coincidences". Truman had just returned from his 4th of July vacation. Around the time that Vandenberg and Symington got back to the Pentagon from the airport, New Mexico Senator Carl Hatch called the White House and requested a private meeting with Truman, granted 2 days later (with unspecified content).

Also simultaneous with this, Truman was meeting with the "atomic admiral" William H. P. Blandy and Truman's naval aide Admiral Foskett, contents unspecified, though Blandy would be quoted the next day making skeptical comments about the saucers.

Truman also met July 10 with Symington, Vandenberg, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, and Gen. Lauris Norstad, allegedly only to sign a proclamation for Air Force Day (celebrating creation of the AF as a separate military service). All the generals had intelligence backgrounds and all had ties to UFO investigations. Doolittle is known to have looked into the Scandanavian ghosts rockets the previous year for Vandenberg when he was director of the Central Intelligence Group and is also rumored to have investigated the "foo fighters" during WWII for Truman. Norstad, as AF director of plans and operations would have been in charge of collecting any aerial reports of potential national security threats and ordering intercepts. (Gen. Ramey would have Norstad's job 3 years later, therefore was involved with intercepts during the 1952 wave over Washington and called the AF's "saucer man".)

The previous morning (July 9), all these men met with Eisenhower for 1-3/4 hour, then Symington and Vandenberg met with the Joint Chiefs for over an hour, supposedly just for lunch, then Symington & Vandenberg conferred for another hour, again all of this with absolutely no detail added to Vandenberg's log about what was discussed. This degree of very high-level military meetings seems a bit much just for declaring AF Day.

But the killer "coincidence" was that suddenly called meeting of Vandenberg, LeMay, and the JRDB headed by Vannevar Bush the morning of July 8, simultaneous with the morning meeting at Roswell to discuss how to deal with the situation. Then Bush and the exact same group were fingered 3 years later by Wilbert Smith and Canadian embassy documents as the secret, high level group looking into the saucers . More "coincidences" at:

Truman held a press conference July 10, said all he knew about the saucers was what he read in the newspapers and compared them to the great moon hoax of 1835 of man-bats on the moon. Truman's press secretary said no investigations into the saucers were under way. (In fact, at the Pentagon, Gen. George Schulgen, asst. director of AAF intelligence, had just launched a secret investigation to be assisted by the FBI. Conclusion: the saucers were quite real. Gen. Twinings follow-up 3 months later: the saucers are real and need to be investigated by multiple government agencies.)

Truman's AF aide from 1948 to 1953, Gen. Robert Landry, said when interviewed by the Truman Library in an oral history, that Truman immediately instructed him to give quarterly oral briefings (thus no paper trail) on the saucers based on central intelligence. Truman would issue another carefully worded statement through his press secretary in 1950 that he knew nothing of any saucers being built by this or any other country, which is not exactly the same as a blanket denial that the saucers didn't exist, period. If they didn't exist, no need for Landry to continue briefing him on nonexistent things until his Presidency ended.

"New Mexico Senator Carl Hatch called the White House and requested a private meeting with Truman, granted 2 days later (with unspecified content)."

It's important to note that Hatch and Truman were good friends on a personal level going back to their Senate days together. He never had a problem getting in to see Truman and did so with some frequency. Hatch did not run for reelection in the next term and Truman gave him a lifetime appointment to the US District Court back home in NM on his leaving the Senate. I think the meeting is very interesting but could go either way.

We do know Truman was directly involved in the DC 1952 event, hosting a meeting in the White House with members of the USAF, Rand Corporation and the National Security Resources Board, which included Landry. This wasn't held until a bit more than a month after the incident/s. Prior to this, Ruppelt reported Landry had called him while the incident was going on to see what was what.

It's not unreasonable to assume you didn't get in with the president until you had something solid together, which isn't going to happen overnight. Best to look in the rough and not the fairway for the ball.

"New Mexico Senator Carl Hatch called the White House and requested a private meeting with Truman, granted 2 days later (with unspecified content)."

To add to this, Hatch also requested and got a private meeting with Truman later that month, July 31 (again with no details), and then another one August 30, but this time with the notation, "he had nothing urgent to discuss, would like to havea talk with the President before they both left Washington." Specifying that there was nothing particularly urgent about this meeting, might suggest one or both of the previous recent privarte meetings did have something urgent to discuss.

Frank Stalter:It's important to note that Hatch and Truman were good friends on a personal level going back to their Senate days together. He never had a problem getting in to see Truman and did so with some frequency.

Quite true, also noted on my website.

I think the meeting is very interesting but could go either way.

Yes, it could have been about something else. I found it interesting because of the coincidence in timing when Gen. Vandenberg and LeMay were trying to kill a crashed disc story out of Houston, followed by Vandenberg dropping everything to personally pick up AAF Secretary Symington at the airport, suggesting some very urgent piece of business that couldn't wait. Which also coincided in time with Roswell PIO Walter Haut saying news of another crash site with disc north of town found by civilians had filtered down to him that afternoon.

Symington, as AF Secretary, also another personal friend of Truman, would definitely be informed of what was happening, as suggested by Gen. Exon.

Another unverified story about Symington's involvement came from the son of Maj. General John B. Montgomery, the general being Symington's military executive officer at the time. (Gen. Montgomery was also SAC director of operations 1948-1953 and C/O of the 8th AF 1953-1955, Gen. Roger "weather balloon" Ramey's command in 1947, which may or may not be significant.)

The son claimed Montgomery, Ramey, Blanchard, and LeMay sequestered all information about Roswell through Symington, to keep knowledge away from Congress.

If this was true, even assuming Hatch's requested meeting July 7 was about Roswell, how much would Truman tell him when he met with him July 9?

As I wrote on my Vandenberg web page about possible Congressional involvement: "According to some testimony, a staff member of either New Mexico Senator Dennis Chavez or Sec. of Agriculture Clinton Anderson (formerly a N.M. Senator) had called Roswell radio station KGFL the morning of July 8 or July 9 and warned them not to air an interview they had just taped with rancher Mack Brazel concerning his crashed flying disc (see, e.g., affidavit of KGFL co-owner Judd Roberts).

"In another account from Pete and Ruben Anaya of Roswell, New Mexico Lt. Governor Joseph Montoya had told them of seeing alien bodies and crash debris in a base hangar, probably on July 8. Some time after this, Chavez allegedly told them, 'Joe Montoya is a damn liar! He didn't see anything. It was a secret project, and it could hurt us with Russia and Germany if word of it got out.'

"This suggests that Chavez was indeed told something, true or not, and that New Mexico's Congressional delegation may have been informed about and involved to some extent in what happened at Roswell."

I would guess the same was probably true with Truman's friend Carl Hatch.

Some of it is, but it's based on some known, properly documented facts. One thing with Truman after Roswell is he was out to sea on his way to and from Brazil to sign the Rio Pact for about three weeks starting at the end of August. The Hatch phone call of Aug 30 was the day before Truman left.

Tracking who Truman might have been communicating with and the subject is going to be lost in that time frame. There's going to be some lag between the events at Roswell and any specific executive action.

The complete reconfiguration of defense and intelligence was in the pipeline before Roswell but a lot of that was finalized right after Truman got back from Rio.

What else was? I have my pet theory . . . . it's a fact some very specific action was taken in that time frame but the who and the why of it are surprisingly nowhere that I can find and I've looked plenty.

Thanks for the correction regarding the Symington - Vandenburg meeting. It is difficult to assess the significance of the attendees at the AF day planning meeting without knowing a lot more about how that was put together.

In summary there are some indications of events landing in Washington in the relevant time period that involved people at the level of Vandenburg and Symington etc, but not much to suggest Truman got heavily involved that appears in the formal record.

Just a thought...One way to begin to test this (know this can never be conclusive) would be:a) Compare Vandenburgs diary for a random selection of 30 other days (say the preceeding 30 work days) and see how many have two or more hastily arranged meetings - i.e. how unusual was that day for Vandenburg.b) Take another very significant event from the Truman administration (e.g. Berlin blockade?)and see if his diary reflected an instant adjustment to consider it or if it followed this type of (possible) pattern with second tier officials doing the leg work and something substantial getting to the President slightly later.

I have no idea of how these tests would come out, nor the expertise in the relevant sources to pursue them myself. My initial hypothesis is that frequent changes of diary arrangements may be quite common at that level and for a really significant event Truman would usually have an initial meeting, with a more substantial follow up later, but that is just my unfounded guess at the moment.

Overall then - it's all a bit contradictory at the moment. Very interesting though!

@ David RudiakPossibly getting a bit far from the original topic, although specifically in relation to the Ramey memo and so broadly connected to the question of hard evidence...Could I ask a specific question about the reading of one phrase (this may be better as a separate conversation outside of this blog?) the bit after 'victims of the wreck' is usually read as 'you forwarded on'. There is an alternative read of 'for convay on'. I was wondering if there were any specific factors that might favour the first interpretation. Confess that, on limited study of that specific bit, I've some sympathy for the 'for convay on' read, but I seem to be in a minority.Recognise that this is a minor point in that something clearly was happening to the 'victims of the wreck' which involved Fort Worth.

“The Ramey memo was referred to in the USAF 1995 Roswell Report but was said to be illegible, even to advanced optical analysis by an official body. Several people tried to find out the name of the organisation that performed this analysis, but got no response.”

The obvious choice would be the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO.

“You can judge its true value by noting that if it were something of real import it would certainly have been preserved and thus be available to the public (and would thus have been located during the 1994 GAO search for documents).”

You mean, just like all the outgoing RAAF communications covering the summer of 1947 that the Air Force agreed should be there by all regulations, but were not there, and couldn’t be accounted for?

The Ramey message would have been an incoming message to the General's office, not to RAAF. My question is, does anyone know if anyone--either the USAF or a private UFO investigator--has ever tried to obtain a documented copy of such a message?

And you’re missing the point about the request to the NRO (or whoever) to analyze the photo. It’s one thing to take a photo that is already in the public domain and see how much information you can pull out of it using state of the art photointerpretation techniques. It’s another to go back into the Pentagon telex logs and see whether there is a documented copy of a message from the Pentagon to Ramey (I’m assuming it was a telex, rather than a prepared speech, because the words that can be deciphered are written in all caps and with spacing indicative of a telex). If they did the latter, then that shows they were actually interested in finding out what the message said. If they did only the former, then that shows they were actually interested in finding out whether the public could find out what the message said.

Someone correct me if I’ve missed something, but I don’t think that the USAF investigation of 1994 revealed any new piece of information to the public that wasn’t already there.

Larry:"Someone correct me if I’ve missed something, but I don’t think that the USAF investigation of 1994 revealed any new piece of information to the public that wasn’t already there."

If the search for documents did not reveal anything new (i.e. anything not already in the public domain) then this indicates that there was nothing new to be found. All you have done is give further support to the claim that no hidden Roswell documents exist.

And surely you are not saying that important documents from 1947-49, if they had information about ETs crashing to earth and being in the possession of the USAF, were simply destroyed? Is such an action really credible?

DR:

"Then Bush and the exact same group were fingered 3 years later by Wilbert Smith and Canadian embassy documents as the secret, high level group looking into the saucers."

Do you know something the rest of us do not? Where does it say, either in Smith's memo or any of the other Canadian documents of that time, that the small group supposedly under Vannevar Bush was the "exact same group" that met with Generals Vandenberg and LeMay on the morning of July 8?

Has anyone EVER established who else was in this "small group" mentioned by Smith? (Please, no MJ-12 stuff, not again!).

Cda wrote: (part 1 of 2)Do you know something the rest of us do not? Where does it say, either in Smith's memo or any of the other Canadian documents of that time, that the small group supposedly under Vannevar Bush was the "exact same group" that met with Generals Vandenberg and LeMay on the morning of July 8?

The group that met with Vandenberg was the Joint Research & Development Board chaired by Vannevar Bush. With the passage of the National Security Act 2 weeks later, it was renamed the Research & Development Board (RDB), but SAME group. Primary function: to continue military R&D through an affiliation of the military, private industry, and academia, like had occurred under Bush when he headed the OSRD (Office of Scientific Research & Development) during WWII. (Eisenhower in 1960 would later call this the "military-industrial complex" and warned about the dangers of it in his last speech as President.)

Wilbert's Smith memo of Nov. 21, 1950 states: "Their modus operandi is unknown, but concentrated effort is being made by a small group head by Doctor Vannevar Bush.”

The "small group" was not identified here, but it was made crystal clear in subsequent memos when Smith and the Canadian embassy in Washington were trying to get clearance from Bush and the RDB and the Canadian equivalent Research Development Board headed by Dr. Omand Solandt (who greenlighted Smith’s saucer research project backed by the resources of the DRB), to publish an article by Donald Keyhoe in TRUE Magazine about UFO propulsion, based on Smith's ideas:

Nov. 24, 1950: Memo Smith to Dr. Solandt: “I would suggest that the article, as revised, be scrutinized by others in the group [DRB] and any amendments which they may suggest to be incorporated in the revision... publication of this material, if permitted by the United States Research and Development Board, would be in the public interest.”

Jan. 3, 1951: SECRET letter Smith to Gordon Cox, Canadian embassy: Smith inquires as to what has become of the Keyhoe article. Says the article was first to be returned to the embassy, after which "Keyhoe was to take it to Dr. Bush for clearance." Again mentions that Solandt and the DRB were to review latest revisions and make changes "which they might consider in Canadian interests."

Jan. 6, 1951, SECRET letter Cox to Smith: Tells Smith that Keyhoe's article was returned to Keyhoe by Dr. Arnauld Wright, DRB Liaison Officer. Wright “had not seen it since nor has he heard anything from Bush or what Bush did.” Cox wanted to get in contact with Keyhoe to learn more, with Lt. Col. Bremner, military attache who set up initial briefings for Smith, arranging contact. Smith would probably hear more via the Wright/Solandt channel. Official position was that nobody at the embassy knew anything. By the Canadian ambassador's instruction, only Cox and Wright were to discuss the matter with anyone. Cox and the ambassador were “particularly interested” if there was going to be “an official U.S. Government statement.” [Nope, no secrets here]

Read the docs for yourself here:http://www.roswellproof.com/smith_papers.html

Maybe cda can illuminate us why all of these people, Solandt, Bush, DRB, & RDB, needed to review, edit, and clear Keyhoe’s supposedly silly article on Smith’s supposedly whacky ideas about things that supposedly didn’t exist, and why did Solandt and the Canadian ambassador insist on maintaining secrecy? Solandt was also later forced to admit in a letter to William Steinman that he did indeed meet “fairly regularly” with Bush and discussed “flying saucers” and Smith’s propulsion ideas “informally”, but allegedly did not recall “any formal team” under Bush dealing with the saucers. These are weasel words, since an off-the-books team or discussions would not be “formal” or “official”, just like covert ops. It’s called plausible deniability.

part 2 of 2:Finally, I should add here that Dr. Bush chaired the DRB from 1947-1948, resigned, but remained on the oversight committee, plus knowing absolutely everyone of any importance on the DRB, many of the scientists and engineers he had known for decades and had been boss over previously as head honcho of Carnegie Tech, NACA, OSRD, JRDB, and RDB.

Also Dr. Robert Sarbacher, one of the initial briefers of Smith and Lt. Bremner, was a member of the guided missile committee of the RDB, interviewed later said he had been invited to the meetings on the subject at Wright-Patterson, but didn’t go, but spoke to other RDB commitee members who had gone. One of these was Dr. Eric Walker, in 1950 Exec. Secretary of the RDB, who when initially contacted by Steinman admitted to these RDB meetings on crashed saucers at W-P.

Brad Sparks also found evidence that the CIA’s Office of Scientific Investigation (OS/I), today called the Directorate of Science and Technology, became the primary investigative group for the DOD's Research and Development Board (RDB) starting in January 1949. Regarding the 1951 Lubbock Lights, Ruppelt alluded to another secret, unofficial group investigating : “The only other people outside Project Blue Book who have studied the complete case of the Lubbock Lights were a group who, due to their associations with the government, had complete access to our files. ...they were scientists—rocket experts, nuclear physicists, and intelligence experts. They had banded together to study our UFO reports because they were convinced that some of the UFO’s that were being reported were interplanetary spaceships...” Sparks thought this group was the CIA’s OS/I, but since the RDB apparently used the OS/I for much of their research, the finger again points at a secret group inside the RDB overseeing the situation. Bush ran OSRD and JRDB/RDB in the same way, sticking to administration, creating and overseeing research committees to do the actual nitty-gritty R&D.

" Primary function: to continue military R&D through an affiliation of the military, private industry, and academia, like had occurred under Bush when he headed the OSRD (Office of Scientific Research & Development) during WWII. (Eisenhower in 1960 would later call this the "military-industrial complex" and warned about the dangers of it in his last speech as President.)"

A couple other things about Bush that often get overlooked. The OSRD also oversaw the Manhattan Project which was obviously an enormous undertaking, kept well secret. He was also one of the founders of the Raytheon Corporation.

Regarding Ike's MIC comments . . . Eisenhower was a far more reactive president compared with Truman's more proactive style. Truman simply knew government and how it worked better. Both were obviously great presidents, but John Steelman's oral history provides some interesting insight into how a MIC may have grown and gotten out of hand . . .

CDA wrote:“And surely you are not saying that important documents from 1947-49, if they had information about ETs crashing to earth and being in the possession of the USAF, were simply destroyed? Is such an action really credible?”

Absolutely. More precisely, documents would be confiscated so they would not be accessible to anyone outside the classified compartment that has authority over the matter. Whether they would be destroyed or not, would be up to the counter intelligence office in charge.

CDA, whenever you express a judgment on how matters inside the US national security apparatus do or don’t work, you display breathtaking ignorance. You are simply clueless.

If the narrative of the Roswell incident that has emerged from the hundreds of first and second hand witnesses is even close to the mark, the incident would have been considered a national security secret of the highest order. Specifically, it would have been declared a compartmented, special access program. Many topics of lesser importance, such as stealth technology, electronic warfare, spy satellites, and the like, are treated that way. What on Earth makes you think that the recovery of ET technology would be of lesser importance?

Special access programs have their own counterintelligence offices assigned to them, by law, or regulation. Special access programs are required to keep the existence of the program itself, classified. It’s not optional. People who accidentally saw the U-2 or SR-71 before they were declassified were contacted, debriefed, and ordered to not reveal what they saw. When military or nuclear secrets accidentally get published, the FBI or other agents go around and collect copies of the books.

And this extends to members of the military, as well. When June Crain and other office workers at Wright-Patt were accidentally allowed to handle some of the “memory foil”, the security agents came around debriefed everyone, and made them promise not to talk about or reveal what they had seen. They are considered “inadvertently exposed to classified material” above their level. If the recovery incident was considered a “core secret” inside the compartment, it would have been required to keep that information hidden from, say the airport tower controller at RAAF, even if that individual had a Top Secret clearance. Going around and collecting information that would reveal the core secret is SOP.

CDA - You probably don't think anything happened at Roswell (LOL) but let me ask you two questions... if it could be proven that the word "victims" is the missing word (100% proven of course) in the Ramey memo - would that change your thinking in terms of the project mogel explanation?

Second question - If Project Mogel goes down - what would you next guess be for what happened in Roswell in 1947?

CDA - You probably don't think anything happened at Roswell (LOL) but let me ask you two questions... if it could be proven that the word "victims" is the missing word (100% proven of course) in the Ramey memo - would that change your thinking in terms of the project mogel explanation?

Second question - If Project Mogel goes down - what would you next guess be for what happened in Roswell in 1947?

"Someone correct me if I’ve missed something, but I don’t think that the USAF investigation of 1994 revealed any new piece of information to the public that wasn’t already there."

The primary "new piece of information" that the USAF "investigation" (a.k.a., cover-up) "revealed" was the pretext of claiming that Mogul balloon launch #4 was the prosaic basis for the Roswell incident.

And which has also been thoroughly discredited. But I guess the USAF felt it needed to pull some kind of bogus rabbit out of a hat, to maintain continuity of government denial and secrecy policy regarding the genuine UFO phenomenon.

@CDA:

"If the search for documents did not reveal anything new (i.e. anything not already in the public domain) then this indicates that there was nothing new to be found. All you have done is give further support to the claim that no hidden Roswell documents exist."

So, absence of public evidence is evidence of absence, CDA? You've heard, I presume, about the logical fallacy of attempting to prove a negative, haven't you?

Your statement is a remarkably "naive" and obtuse one, if honest.

As Larry notes: "CDA, whenever you express a judgment on how matters inside the US national security apparatus do or don’t work, you display breathtaking ignorance. You are simply clueless."

I suspect CDA knows better, but is simply attempting to advance the pseudo-skeptical agenda of his own confirmation biases, regardless of what facts are brought, repeatedly, to his attention that belie his presumptuous comments.

As far as Larry's and Steve Sawyer's remarks are concerned, I merely said that the missing documents to and from Roswell in the '47-'49 period did not contain anything of value to ET proponents, and are therefore not the least important. And yes, I am positive of this, despite being labelled as "clueless".

One day, when either of them, or anyone else, produces a genuine document to or from Roswell that confirms ET presence on earth in 1947 I will retract my remarks.

ET proponents like to think these missing papers constitute the great 'smoking gun'. A preposterous notion. A case of "yes the proof was there but was purposely destroyed before the scientific world or the public could see it". Just like all the other Roswell documents that are (or were) stashed away in secret vaults. And ET bodies too, I suppose.

Believe this if you want. I don't and I suggest to both of you that you are just looking for excuses. 'Sour grapes', is that the phrase?

I can assure you that no scientist looking and hoping for evidence of ET intelligence (and there are plenty of these) is going to spend one iota of time even thinking about these totally worthless (to science) missing papers from Roswell AAF.

I have all those letters/documents you mention. I am far from persuaded that the small group under Bush (i.e. the group Wilbert Smith said was studying the 'modus operandi' of the saucers) is the same group that met with Generals Vandenberg and LeMay on the morning of July 8.

Smith, I should add, got his information second-hand, i.e. he did not meet Sarbacher direct but through an intermediary.

Keyhoe's prospective article in TRUE was all to do with Smith's work in trying to build a model of a saucer in his Canadian lab, and had zilch to do with Roswell. Perhaps DR thinks Smith was trying to reverse-engineer the Roswell saucer, 3 to 4 years after it was all supposedly classified top secret from everyone but the select few.

For some reason Smith, a Canadian engineer and a saucer nutcase, was one of those select few. Sure.

"..I merely said that the missing documents to and from Roswell in the '47-'49 period did not contain anything of value to ET proponents, and are therefore not the least important. And yes, I am positive of this, despite being labelled as "clueless"."

I will keep this simple. The documents are missing. That means that no one in a position to comment knows what's in them. That means you cannot know they did not contain anything of value to ET proponents. For exactly the same reason you cannot know they did contain anything of value to ET proponents. Most people, with the reasoning ability of a 5 year old realize that if the evidence available is not decisive in the direction of either of two conclusions, then the intelligent thing to do is to not decide, unless and until more information is available.

In spite of that, you not only decide in one direction, you are "positive" about it. That means that anyone with the reasoning ability of a 5 year old can also see that your statements are not being guided by the normal rules of logic in which conclusions follow from inductive and deductive reasoning. You are just making crap up (again).

I am perfectly entitled to draw conclusions from the fact that these 'precious' documents were destroyed. My conclusion is that they contained nothing of value to science and nothing about an ET craft crashing to earth in NM.

My reasoning is thus: If they HAD contained such important scientific and/or military information they would NOT have been destroyed. They would have been carefully preserved. That is why I am positive about my remarks.

One is entitled to assign probabilities to events such as this; I concede that perhaps (with an infinitely low probability) some AF records clerk goofed, and absent-mindedly destroyed EACH AND EVERY ONE of these papers. Is it credible?

You evidently seem to think that it is as likely as not that these papers contained the 'smoking gun'.

But dont' give up. There are plenty of other such documents still locked up in the archives - as any conspiracist will tell you. So there is still a slight (very slight) chance someone will locate them eventually.

cda wrote: (part 1 of 2)I have all those letters/documents you mention. I am far from persuaded that the small group under Bush (i.e. the group Wilbert Smith said was studying the 'modus operandi' of the saucers) is the same group that met with Generals Vandenberg and LeMay on the morning of July 8.

To repeat, group that met with Vandenberg/LeMay July 8: Joint Research and Development Board chaired by Bush, with "Joint" dropped from the name with passage of the National Security Act 2 weeks later. But SAME organization. First chair of RDB: Bush, 1947-1948, thereafter sat on the oversight committee.

Person named by Smith Nov. 1950 as directing a small group looking into the modus operandi of the saucers: Bush.

U.S. officials named by Smith and Canadian embassy official Gordon Cox immediately thereafter needed to clear Donald Keyhoe's article for True Magazine on Smith's saucer propulsion ideas: Bush and the RDB.

Group 30+ years later that primary source Dr. Robert Sarbacher said met at Wright-Patterson to discuss crashed saucer recoveries: RDB. Persons definitely involved: Bush and mathematician John von Neumann. As a member of the RDB guided missile committee, Sarbacher said he had been invited to these meetings but did not attend.

http://www.roswellproof.com/Sarbacher_Nov1983.html

Another person later named by Sarbacher as being definitely involved: Dr. Eric Walker, Exec. Sec. of the RDB in 1950, President of Penn State Univ. Walker when initially contacted confirmed such meetings on crashed saucers took place at W-P.

Despite this, CDA pretends there could be no connection between the group that met with Vandenberg July 8, 1947 (JRDB), and the group headed by Bush within the RDB in 1950 described by Smith. This begs the question, is CDA really this dense, or does he just pretend to be because he is a troll?

Smith, I should add, got his information second-hand, i.e. he did not meet Sarbacher direct but through an intermediary.

Like most of CDA's absolutist pronouncements, this too is very likely false. Smith's handwritten notes can be viewed here:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Smith_9_15_50.html

Note that Smith at beginning says "Notes on interview through Lt./C Bremner [military attache at Canadian embassy, Washington] with Dr. Robert Sarbacher." This is no doubt the basis on which CDA claims Smith wasn't there.

But also note that the questions to Sarbacher are all initialed WBS, Smith's initials. These are Smith's questions, perhaps asked by Bremner instead of Smith for some sort of protocol reasons, or perhaps "through Bremner" means simply that Bremner was intermediary in arranging the interview. More likely, both Bremner and Smith were there and Smith personally asked the questions.

But more importantly, note what Smith writes at the end: "The above is written out from memory following the interview. I have tried to keep it it as nearly verbatim as possible."

Now to persons with normal English reading comprehension, this means at the very least Smith was in the room when Sarbacher was answering his questions, but perhaps not allowed to take notes. These he wrote out immediately afterward "from memory" trying to keep it "verbatim". Kind of hard to do that if you aren't there in person at the interview itself.

Response cda, part 2 of 2Keyhoe's prospective article in TRUE was all to do with Smith's work in trying to build a model of a saucer in his Canadian lab, and had zilch to do with Roswell.

You do love your debunking red herrings and straw men, don't you? Whoever said Keyhoe's article was about Roswell? However, the subject of crashed saucers in Smith's first memo being investigated by Bush and a secret group has everything to do with Roswell.

That memo of Nov. 21, 1950, also has everything to do with the subject of investigating geomagnetic energy as a possible energy and propulsion source of the saucers, with Smith writing he met with Dr. Omand Solandt only the day before to discuss this, Solandt green-lighting the project and promising support of the Canadian DRB in Smith’s research.

Only 3 days later (Nov. 24), Smith wrote a memo to Solandt discussing the Keyhoe article about Smith’s geomagnetic ideas and says it needs the clearance of the U.S. RDB. Yet CDA pretends all these subjects have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

And note how CDA dodges the question I posed him: Why would Keyhoe's article based on Smith, the "saucer nutcase" (see CDA below) require review and clearance from Bush, the RDB, and the Canadian equivalents of Dr. Solandt and the Defence Research Board? Why does Smith write Gordon Cox of the Canadian embassy that Solandt insisted on maintaining the same level of security as the Americans, and Cox writes back that the Canadian ambassador also insisted on secrecy and that the information was to be closely held by only a small group at the embassy? Obviously, all these people were "saucer nutcases" on the level of Smith.

Perhaps DR thinks Smith was trying to reverse-engineer the Roswell saucer, 3 to 4 years after it was all supposedly classified top secret from everyone but the select few.

For some reason Smith, a Canadian engineer and a saucer nutcase, was one of those select few. Sure.

Well, let's see. The Manhattan Project, the most highly classified project of WWII, had all sorts of foreign scientists and engineers involved, nutcases like Fermi, Teller, Rabi. Canadian physicist/chemist Louis Slotin was the first person to die of radiation poisoning at Los Alamos following an experiment gone bad.

Surely these disreputable, unreliable foreigners, especially a (gasp!) Canadian, would never get such high security clearances to work on the A-bomb superweapon or the later H-bomb being developed at the same time as the Smith memo. "Saucer nutcases" also claim a Hungarian, Edward Teller, was in charge of that. Can you believe it?

According to CDA logic, this never would have happened. But historical reality says differently.

"However, the subject of crashed saucers in Smith's first memo being investigated by Bush and a secret group has everything to do with Roswell".

Really? Look at that memo again. It has, as I said, nothing to do with Roswell, nothing at all.

In fact, Smith mentions Scully's book which Sarbacher told him (through Bremner) is "substantially correct", meaning that Smith's memo is far more likely to have everything to do with Aztec, not Roswell. If you want to link Smith's memo with any crashed saucer tale, then Aztec is the one. As for Roswell, Smith had never heard of it! (Or at least he gives no indication he had).

So if DR wants to regurgitate the Smith/Sarbacher connection he should direct himself to Aztec instead of Roswell.

I believe all the A-bomb/H-bomb scientists DR mentions were naturalised US citizens before getting involved, although I have not checked their credentials on this point.

And it is the height of absurdity to compare any of these eminent men with Wilbert Smith.

cda cluelessly wrote: (part 1 of 2)Really? Look at that memo again. It has, as I said, nothing to do with Roswell, nothing at all.

It confirms the reality of saucers based on the Sarbacher briefing and mentions Scully's book about one being studied that fell into the hand's of Americans, i.e., a saucer crash (unspecified).

In fact, Smith mentions Scully's book which Sarbacher told him (through Bremner)

Again you ignore the FACT that Smith wrote in his notes immediately afterward that the questions (which were noted as being his, not Bremner's) and Sarbacher's answers were written "from memory" and "verbatim" as possible, meaning Smith WAS there in person. Sarbacher's responses were NOT filtered through Bremner, though you continue to play disingenuous debunker games and pretend that they were.

is "substantially correct", meaning that Smith's memo is far more likely to have everything to do with Aztec, not Roswell.

Scully's book was primarily about how the U.S. had retrieved crashed saucers and alien bodies and were studying them. (Scully mentioned more than Aztec.) Smith asked if the saucers were real and if Scully's book was true. Sarbacher said the saucers were quite real and the facts in Scully's book were "substantially correct".

Now in the English I understand, this does not mean entirely correct. The "substance" or gist or basic truth was correct, but not necessarily the details. Sarbacher said Scully had it right, that the saucers were real and that there had been at least one retrieved crash. Sarbacher wasn't any more specific about it; he may not have even known. It didn't have to be Aztec, it could still have been Roswell or some other crash and Scully might still be "substantially correct".

If you want to link Smith's memo with any crashed saucer tale, then Aztec is the one. As for Roswell, Smith had never heard of it! (Or at least he gives no indication he had).

What difference does it make? How you can pretend that the first book to seriously consider the truth of crashed saucers and said to be "substantially correct" cannot possibly have anything to do with Roswell is beyond me. More of your deliberate obtuseness and denial based on you clairvoyant abilities to know everything with your absolute certainty.

So if DR wants to regurgitate the Smith/Sarbacher connection he should direct himself to Aztec instead of Roswell.

Yes, oh mighty one with the absolute knowledge of what must be true or not. I must obey. Sarbacher was corroborating the one true saucer crash at Aztec, not Roswell.

I believe all the A-bomb/H-bomb scientists DR mentions were naturalised US citizens before getting involved, although I have not checked their credentials on this point.

Slotin, the Canadian I mentioned, was not. I could name a few more who weren't, such has Klaus Fuchs, born German, naturalized British, never naturalized American, who ultimately turned out to be a spy. Wolfgang Pauli was Austrian, then Swiss, still worked on the Manhattan Project during the war, only becoming a U.S. citizen in 1946. Neils Bohr was Danish, period. Leó Szilárd was Hungarian, becoming a U.S. citizen after the MP was under way in 1943. Emilio Segrè was Italian, not naturalized until 1944. Otto Frisch was Austrian/British. James Chadwick was British, period.

In fact, numerous MP scientists were foreign-born, whether naturalized or not at the time. Not being a U.S. citizen was not necessarily an impediment to receiving the highest security clearance possible and working on the A-bomb if you were considered an important asset and not a security risk.

On the other hand, I know nuclear physicist George Gamow was not part of the MP even though he became an American citizen in 1940, because he was Russian born, had worked for the Russians, and therefore was considered a security risk even though he had defected a decade earlier.

How about my uncle Lester Stark, a chemistry/metallurgical student of Glenn Seaborg at Berkeley, only 21 and just got his bachelor's degree. My aunt was only 20 when they went to Los Alamos. They were total nobody's, both still required the highest clearance to even be at Los Alamos much less work on the bomb. Lot's of MP scientists were unproven youngsters just out of college, including those who later became famous, like Richard Feynman.

Wilbert Smith had some novel ideas about how the saucers might work, a problem which was apparently stumping the mighty, "eminent" American scientists (according to Sarbacher in the interview).

Nah, the Americans could never possibly view Smith as an asset to work on a problem they couldn't crack--because CDA knows with certainly that this couldn't happen. CDA knows everything.

Incidentally, according to Canadian researcher Grant Cameron who has also responded to CDA's numerous mis-characterizations of Smith in the past, Smith already held a top-secret Canadian clearance because he has the chief radio engineer for Canadian government, monitored 50,000 radio frequencies, and ran the top secret "Radio Ottawa" where Canadian spies could radio in to the intelligence services. He wasn't exactly a total nobody in Canada. Remember that Smith's memo says he had just conferred with Dr. Omand Solandt, the Canadian science czar who headed the Defence Research Board (cabinet status in Canada). Solandt approved Smith's proposal to research geomagetics and would have his and the DRB's support. CDA instead tries to portray Smith as nothing but a inept scientist and "saucer nut."

This Smith/Sarbacher affair is getting complicated, like so much else in UFO history. I'll summarise it as best I can.

Sarbacher's letter of November 29, 1983 to William Steinman contains the phrase:

"I recall the interview with Dr Bremner at the Canadian Embassy. I think the answers I gave him were the ones you listed [in a letter, one of many that Steinman wrote to Sarbacher beforehand]".

In other words, Smith was, most probably, not present. Either that or Sarbacher has simply forgotten.

However, in Friedman's interview with Sarbacher soon after the Nov 29 letter, we get, from Friedman's notes:

"F: Let's see early fifties now the notes that I sent you from Wilbert Smith, do you remember, you do remember talking to him.

S: Ya vaguely

F: The Canadian.

S: Ya vaguely

Therefore Sarbacher does recall Bremner (when answering one letter) but then "vaguely" recalls Smith (when being interviewed soon after by Friedman). But wait a minute: wasn't Bremner also a Canadian? So exactly who is Sarbacher referring to?

It is obvious that both Steinman and Friedman had to prompt Sarbacher considerably before he could recall anything or any names at all, and must cast serious doubts on the rest of the information he gave in 1983.

A perfect example of NOT relying on distant memories; yet this is precisely what Roswell investigators so often do.

So on balance we cannot say for certain whether Smith was present in that 1950 interview. I say he was not, based on his own words in his 1950 memo:

"I made discreet enquiries through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington (i.e. Bremner) WHO WERE ABLE TO OBTAIN FOR ME the following information: ...."

Note my capitals please.

This, plus Smith's own handwritten notes of Sept 1950 where he says the interview was "via Lt Col Bremner", indicate to me that Smith was NOT present. However, I concede that we cannot be 100% certain.

Sometime when you have some spare time, read Smith's articles in 'Flying Saucer Review' from 1958-62 and decide for yourself his qualities as a scientist or whether he is a 'basket case'.

It may be of use to add one further data point regarding the link of the RDB to the study of UFOs in the early 1950's. Ruppelt describes the attendees at his regular briefings at the Pentagon as being an officer from Air Force Intelligence (writing this from memory, think this was named as Brigadier Garland) and a Major General from Research and Development. This later officer is not named in the book and Ruppelt was somewhat vague about his identity in separate notes on relevant personalities, saying his thought his name was White.

Whilst a Google search comes up with a Major General Jerry White as the army link person to the RDB in 1950 I am not at all certain this the same person Ruppelt was meeting two years later. The main points are that here we have a clear split in the reporting chain from Blue Book of intelligence that has gone through an initial filter at Blue Book going both through the normal AF chain of command but also into Research and Development, with a two star general as the 'bag carrier'.

We therefore have a good set of interconnecting pieces of evidence that demonstrate JRDB /RDB participation in study of the UFO phenomenon, with both Smith and Ruppelt indicating that the phenomenon was considered real. The remit of the RDB was such that they could only have been interested in technological questions.

As an aside I do think it is somewhat unreasonable to use some of Smith's later comments, when he may well have been experiencing the effects of the brain tumor that killed him to cast aspersions on his earlier work. One has only to note Solandt's engagement, including funding, to recognise that Smith was a serious figure at that time. The debate on Smith's presence or otherwise at the meeting with Sarbacher may seem a touch academic but Smith's contemporaneous hand written notes of the meeting, with his initials against the questions and his comment that the note was written from memory and verbatim seems as conclusive as it is possible to be.

Just to add, in terms of linking this discussion back to the original article and, in particular, to evidence in favour of the ETH...It is perfectly possible to construct a scenario in which there was no crash recovery at Roswell. Serious interest in the flying disc began, in this scenario, in the first week of July 1947 due to high credibility military sightings with early studies such as the Twining memo and the Sign estimate causing sober concern much sparking much debate within the military. For the RDB to get involved seems a far more sensible development than a purely Grudge like response immediately after the best air technical intelligence brains advised the top brass they were dealing with extraterrestrial craft.That said the coincidence of timing of the start of serious interest in the disks and the timing of Roswell is quite striking. Factor in the fasification of the Mogul hypothesis, the interesting questions raised by the Ramey memo and the discussion here around the JRDB - RDB engagement and you begin to get the start of a case

Anthony Mugan raises another area of doubt. What did Wilbert Smith die of?

I have put this on the Iconoclasts blog as well. Some say it was a brain tumor, which may explain his rather dotty writings in his later years. Bur Grant Cameron told me long ago that it was stomach cancer.

Which is it? Does anyone know?

It does make a bit of difference, his later writings ought not to have been affected by stomach cancer, whereas the situation would be very different if it was indeed a brain tumor.

Just to clarify. I wouldn't want to sweepingly dismiss Smith's later comments in this field. There are aspects of ufology that might appear odd at first sight but where the picture gets a lot more puzzling on closer examination, and of course there are aspects that are plain 'dotty' as CDA puts it. I can't say I've studied his later writings in detail but I would apply a case by case assessment. For the purposes of this discussion, however, it is his stature a decade earlier that is relevant and he was clearly well regarded.

"I am perfectly entitled to draw conclusions from the fact that these 'precious' documents were destroyed. My conclusion is that they contained nothing of value to science and nothing about an ET craft crashing to earth in NM."

But that's the point you're either too dim to understand or are deliberately glossing over. You're NOT drawing your conclusion from the fact that the documents are missing. The fact that the documents are missing does not support EITHER the conclusion that they contained information about an ET craft crashing to earth in NM OR the conclusion that they did not. No one can know what the documents did or did not say without having read them. Not you. Not me. Not anyone.

It's a free country and you can state any cockamamie "conclusion" you want. You just can't show that it is supported by the irrelevant fact you cited. You just made your conclusion up out of thin air.

Surely you realise that there is a balance of probabilities. I certainly did NOT draw my conclusion "out of thin air".

Important documents are not destroyed. Even when their scientific usefulness has expired, they are of historical value. The crash of an ET craft on earth would have tremendous scientific value and be of interest to historians for decades, maybe centuries. It would constitute the first known instance of such an event. Such papers would be retained safely. After all, every Roswell ET proponent insists that official papers on it exist somewhere in top secret vaults.

Therefore such RAAF documents would NOT be destroyed (except by a gross act of carelessness on someone's part).

A rational conclusion is that since the said documents WERE destroyed they contained routine messages of no interest to anyone. They were, in effect, junk paper.

Yes I can draw this conclusion, and it is one many others drew at the time. Of course I cannot say what they contained without reading them, but I CAN say, with virtual certainty, that they did not contain references to a crashed ET craft.

I repeat: the balance (large balance) of probabilities is that these Roswell papers are, or were, worthless junk.

Certainly! In logic and probabilty, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It's not just a general principle, it's a law of probability: The absence of evidence [of "unicorns from outer space"] is evidence of their absence in the world.

The "folk" maxim "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is used by people to hang on to their beliefs even when faced with a lack of evidence for them. However, this is technically an incorrect maxim; if evidence is lacking when we expect it to be abundant, then it very much allows us to dismiss a hypothesis, and absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

"Your statement is a remarkably "naive" and obtuse one, if honest."

I think we know who is "naive," "obtuse," and "clueless." Those who attempt to defend absurd positions based in appeals to the negative [Real NOT-identifieds exist] with ignorant "folk" rationalizations ["Can-NOT prove a negative"] without even thinking, so not realizing how fundamentally flawed their false beliefs are.

Anthony Mugan wrote:We therefore have a good set of interconnecting pieces of evidence that demonstrate JRDB /RDB participation in study of the UFO phenomenon, with both Smith and Ruppelt indicating that the phenomenon was considered real. The remit of the RDB was such that they could only have been interested in technological questions.

To add to this, Gen. Nathan Twining's infamous memo of Sept. 23, 1947, that says the saucers were real and urges investigations, mentions the JRDB as one of the government groups that should be involved, along with the AF, Army, Navy, AEC, NEPA (nuclear propulsion program), AFSAG (Air Force Scientific Advisory Group), NACA (National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics--predecessor of NASA ), and RAND corporation.

It goes on to say that the groups on the list were to be forwarded essential information, respond with ideas, and then work together. The (J)RDB was not at the head of the pyramid in this memo, but then the memo was primarily about gathering additional intelligence on the saucers. A group like the RDB might be involved in back-engineering (hence about them figuring out the modus operandi of the saucers in the Smith memo), which might be done through delegating responsibility on the problem to any relevant subcommittee such as guided missiles or electronics. This was the way Bush operated the OSRD during WWII and the way he would have operated the RDB when he was director.

Another point is that there was a lot of crossover of personnel in these various programs. Bush had been director of NACA and was still on the board, as was Vandenberg in 1950 as AF Chief of Staff.

Gen.'s Norstad, Doolittle, and LeMay plus Dr. Edward Bowles of MIT helped establish Project RAND in 1946. The first white paper of RAND was about orbiting a satellite. Both Bowles and LeMay briefed Gen. Vandenberg before that suddenly called JRDB meeting the morning of July 8, 1947. (Bowles also served as a consultant to the Sec. of War, soon to be Forrestal in 1947.) The one known outcome of that meeting was about establishing an orbital satellite facility.

Norstad and Doolittle met with Vandenberg, and AAF Sec. Symington the following morning, then the Joint Chiefs, then Truman the following day, allegedly only about AF Day. Doolittle had investigated the European ghost rockets the previous year for Vandenberg when he was director of central intelligence and maybe the foo fighters the year before that for Truman. Norstad's official Pentagon duties in 1947 would have involved collecting saucer reports as potential threats to national security (CIRVIS reports).

Dr. Jerome Hunsaker headed NACA and was on the AFSAG, which in a few months after the Twining memo we know was already being briefed on the saucers by Project Sign. Bush, Hunsaker, Vandenberg, and Twining were all alleged MJ-12 members.

MJ-12 or no MJ-12, you've got to admit they would have been logical choices for a saucer control committee. And all were thick as thieves in military R&D.

cda wrote:Anthony Mugan raises another area of doubt. What did Wilbert Smith die of? I have put this on the Iconoclasts blog as well. Some say it was a brain tumor,

Phil Klass made an issue of this, and a few at NICAP also, according to Grant Cameron's website.

...which may explain his rather dotty writings in his later years. Bur Grant Cameron told me long ago that it was stomach cancer. Which is it? Does anyone know?

According to the Cameron website, he died of cancer of the lower bowel, not stomach cancer.

I just emailed Grant asking his source of information--the family? Grant replied as follows:

"I discussed this with son, metallurgist who took him to Montreal for treatments, and wife. Not 100% sure but I recall specifically talking to James Smith and A.W.L. Bridge the metallurgist about this."

Grant added he was traveling at the moment and would double-check his notes when he returned home. But I would think this would trump whatever rumors Phil Klass invented to discredit Smith.

It does make a bit of difference, his later writings ought not to have been affected by stomach cancer, whereas the situation would be very different if it was indeed a brain tumor.

Colorectal cancer tends to be locally invasive and not metastatic (spreading elsewhere through the body). Metastasis of colorectal cancer to the brain is unusual and normally follows metastasis to the liver first. This would happen only in a very advanced stage of the cancer and the patient would have only a very limited time to live, perhaps only weeks or months.

Even if Smith had brain tumors, they were probably not large and not causing symptoms. I once took a human dissection class and one of the cadavers had dozens of metastatic tumors in the brain, one fairly sizable. According to the case report that accompanied the body, the patient had only minor neurological symptoms at the end, if I recall correctly.

Smith died in 1962 and metastatic brain cancer, IF he had it, would not have figured into anything he said prior to this, until maybe the very end.

Even brain tumors do not necessarily mean someone will have "dotty" thoughts. Nice try smearing the man's reputation again, though.

Regarding whether Smith had brain cancer, the neurological effects and cognition effects would be dependent on the type of neoplasm and the location of the mass.

Frontal temporal damage (glioblastoma)would have caused expressive aphasia resulting in irritable frustration leading to bouts of agitation, not withstanding the labile emotional symptoms. Basically it would have been extremely difficult to perform on a highly intellectual level.

Colorectal with invasion to the liver would lead to metabolic instability/liver toxicity which also invariably affect cognition via delirium.

Regardless of the type of cancer associated with Smith's death, he would have had difficulty performing cognitive-wise.

There is currently no evidence that Smith had brain cancer. The family and friend/colleague said he died of colon cancer. That it spread to the liver and maybe to the brain was strictly speculation. So currently no evidence that his liver was compromised, and colon cancer would not cause a glioblastoma in any case--completely different tumors.

You seem anxious to conclude that Smith was cognitively impaired by brain cancer toward the end of his life (1962). Do you have any actual evidence of this?

Even if he was, what does this have to do with his UFO work and statements through the 1950s? Metastasis to the brain from colon cancer and large brain tumors would have only happened in a very advanced stage of colon cancer, i.e. shortly before he died. It would have nothing to do his cognitive abilities much earlier.

I have now located every one of W.B. Smith's articles in FSR from 1958 to 1963, plus the text of a speech he gave in Vancouver in March 1961 and another at Ottawa in '58. There may well be others published elsewhere.

I won't list them here as it is off topic. If anyone is interested, just say so on this blog and I can send it as an email attachment.

Someone produced a CD of Smith's speeches, called PROJECT MAGNET. I think it was Wendy Connors.

CDAAdd me to the list. I have about a thousand pages of various Smith papers, but don't think I have the FSR articles. Smith may have been wrong in his theories, but I don't think he was crazy, even at the end dying of bowel cancer.